The word “vitality” has been coming up fairly often these days in conversations with friends. I’ve been looking at it in the context of what it is that makes someone feel most alive- in what they’re doing, contemplating, or experiencing. What is that component of one’s experience where this vital joy resides?
I thought about the cable-channel pundits who get seemingly such fierce involvement with negativity of one form or another. And it’s true that negativity and fear will engender a certain kind of limbic fight-or-flight energy. But after a while the adrenals run the body into exhaustion. The cry of wolf goes less and less heeded.
From the positive side, vitality enlivens, and brings energy with it. This is the kindling of the heart-mind flame that I was talking about in the first post. When the joy that one has, has been found, it can then be laterally associated across topics, and generalized into other areas of life that may be other than as lively as one would like. A glowing ember in one area of one’s life is fanned to flame by lovingly attending to it, and it can then ignite and en-flame these other areas.
As we become more expert at finding these sparks within ourselves, we become better at recognizing them in others, and by our very attention and open-hearted interest, also kindling latent sparks in others. A fire needs fuel, air, and spark. What is the fuel; that which you can hardly get enough of? What is the air, where your life breathes? And the spark: where is your life most vital? And how do you make space for that liveliness to begin to light up your being, more and more often, from inside?
©2011 Anthony S. Wright, Ph.D.c, All Rights Reserved.
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